Reinforce the Noun with French Stress Pronouns

A French stress pronoun replaces or emphasizes a human object. You can find it alone, after c’est (it is), or after a preposition. The beauty of this pronoun is that it’s nonintegrated, which means you don’t need to worry about where to put it in the sentence: It goes right after the preposition or c’est!

There are eight French stress pronouns:

moi (me)

toi (you [singular informal])

lui (him)

elle (her)

nous (us)

vous (you [singular formal or plural formal and informal])

eux (them [masculine])

elles (them [feminine])

Stress pronouns can replace a French noun

After the expression c’est (this is), or also used alone, the stress pronoun emphasizes or points out someone, like in these examples:

You also use a stress pronoun after certain verbs + de, like avoir besoin de (to need) and être amoureux de (to be in love with), when the object of these verbs is a person, not a thing. Check out these examples:

Il a peur de son prof de math. (He is afraid of his math teacher.) → Il a peur de lui. (He is afraid of him.)

L’enfant a besoin de ses parents. (The child needs his parents.) → L’enfant a besoin d’eux. (The child needs them.)

When verbs like penser à (to think about) ands’intéresser à (to be interested in) are followed by a human object, you have to use a stress pronoun in place of an indirect object pronoun. Here are some common verbs of this kind.

Stress pronoun reinforce a noun

The stress pronoun can also reinforce the subject of a verb, for effect. As long as it refers to a person, that subject can be a noun, like son mari (her husband), or the subject pronoun (je, tu, and so on). In both cases, the stress pronoun is placed right after the subject, often separated by a comma.

Jeanne part en vacances; son mari, lui, travaille. (Jane is going on vacation; but her husband, he’s working.)

The stress pronoun can reinforce a subject pronoun, but it can never replace it. In other words, the stress pronoun can never be the subject of the verb. Don’t say Moi mange beaucoup de chocolat. (Me, I eat a lot of chocolate.) You still have to use the subject pronoun (underlined in the example): Moi, je mange beaucoup de chocolat. (Me, I eat a lot of ­chocolate.)